


Trying Everything

by lucky_spike



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Necromancy, Robots, Stabdads AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucky_spike/pseuds/lucky_spike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aradia dies, Droog falls apart. Slick does what he can to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trying Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ['Atta Girl'](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/4426) by Shalala. 



> Thanks to encouragement from the wonderful Path this is now on AO3 instead of just tumblr. Also, this is just an alternate timeline for the main stabdads AU so once again it's an AU of an AU . . . yup. Basically, the picture that inspired this made me really sad and this is what happened.

Aradia had been taller than Karkat but now, crumpled and pale and bloody, she looked so small, so young.

Or maybe that was just the way Droog was holding her, cradled like she was asleep.

For maybe the first time in his life – he couldn’t remember, partially because some part of him was just screaming at the world – Spades Slick wasn’t sure what to say. There wasn’t anything that could be said.

Droog was shaking.

Slick stood there, next to him, six inches and a whole world apart, until the paramedics took her away.

They didn’t talk. Slick just put a hand on the other man’s shoulder and they left, slow and silent, into the dark.

-()-

The Crew wouldn’t leave him alone. Diamonds Droog was dangerous on a good day. Now, he wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t look at anybody with more than a dead, blank glare. The funeral was the quietest Slick had ever been to – not that he’d been to many – but everyone had sat on ice, waiting for the break.

Three days later, it still hadn’t come. Droog mostly sat on the couch in the hideout, knees curled up to his chest, slouched onto the arm, arms folded. He didn’t cry, didn’t talk, didn’t eat, drink or smoke, nothing. They’d all tried in their own ways to snap him out of it. Hearts had cooked what they’d all sort of figured was Droog’s favorite, because he’d never said, Clubs tried talking him out of it and Slick, as a last resort, had tried harassing him about something unrelated.

Nada.

Day five and they were trying to remember the last time they’d seen him eat or sleep.

Day six and Slick just sat next to him with a cup of coffee. It was cold by the time Droog finally moved. His hand was steady, and he just took the Styrofoam cup from Slick. He didn’t stop staring at the wall, didn’t say anything, but he moved.

Slick patted him on the shoulder and left the room, making sure he was close by the door just in case. He didn’t check if Droog had actually finished it.

Day seven and Clubs took over watch after Slick’s 24-hour shift. Slick went home and hugged Karkat for a full minute, silent. Karkat let him, hugged back, and then broke down. Slick just listened, next to the kid on the couch, one hand rubbing circles on Karkat’s back while he sobbed into Slick’s shoulder.

Day eight and Droog got off the couch. Which was progress, Slick admitted, although personally he’d have preferred that Droog not attempt leave the hideout armed with a small arsenal. He stood stubbornly in the door and realized for maybe the second time in his life – the first time being their very first meeting, all those years ago in Derse – how scary Diamonds Droog was.

“Get out of the way,” he said, tone flat, blank as he’d been for the past week. Slick braced himself in the doorframe.

“It ain’t gonna make it right, Droog,” Slick said. “You can’t go after Cans alone. It’s suicide.”

“Move.”

“Droog don’t _do_ this.” He gulped. “It ain’t gonna bring her back – we don’t even know it _was_ Felt.”

It would have been better if the other man had said something, yelled or something. Instead he just clocked Slick, right in the good eye, and then shot him through the shoulder. Spades folded and Droog stepped through the door and into the night.

“He went rogue,” Slick mumbled, when Hearts found him later, bleeding and essentially blind, his eye all but swollen shut.

“Shit, boss.” He scooped Slick up, propped him on his feet and nudged him toward the couch.

Slick collapsed into Droog’s spot, his hand still pressed against the bullet hole, soaked in blood. “I tried to stop him.”

He could feel the couch sink under Hearts’ weight. “I’ll patch you up, go out’n find him.”

Slick laughed, grimly. “Probably just need to fucking follow the trail of bodies.”

“I was thinkin’ the same thing.” He sighed through his nose. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna bring her back but he’s gonna try, ain’t he?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Slick asked, but his mind was racing. _Nothing gonna bring her back_ . . .

“Yeah. Try anything.”

Slick hissed as the iodine hit the wound. “Before you go, help me get my arm off. I need the company’s number.”

“Why?”

“’Cause we ain’t tried everything yet.”

-()-

In the end it was Clubs that found Droog, on the end of a pier, staring into the water.

The guards bobbed in the current below, face-down.

“Cans ain’t here,” he told Clubs who, in a fit of unprecedented bravery, slid his hand into Droog’s and led him away from the edge.

“I know, boss. Let’s go home.”

-()-

The cops found Cans the next morning. It wasn’t hard. The amount of blood alone would have filled an oil drum.

If you could find a way to gather it all up from the warehouse floor, that is.

They’d increased watch over Droog, two guys at a time, now. One afternoon, when Clubs and Hearts were on, Slick drove out to the Aperture depot and had the guys load a cardboard box into the back of the van.

Karkat was home when he got back, and he was sort of glad. His shoulder was still giving him hell and the box was heavy as shit, for one thing, and for the other he felt distinctly as though he needed some kind of barometer for sanity at the moment.

“Oh my God,” Karkat said, when they opened the box. “You’re a fucking lunatic.”

“If it works –”

“This is _sick_. And _insane_.”

Slick was kneeling on the floor, the rug of his office rolled back. He looked up to Karkat through the black eye, bruised but not swollen anymore, thank God. “Can it hurt to ask?”

Karkat looked to the box, and to his guardian, kneeling in the middle of a pentagram, mid-way through scribbled sigils and Latin. “What if she says no?”

“Then we fucking tried everything.”

The silence hung in the air like a lead balloon. “You’d do the same for me?” Karkat asked quietly. Slick watched him and then, slowly, nodded. Karkat sniffed. “I’ll get the candles.”

Twelve blocks away, Droog was asleep – Hearts had slipped him some sleeping pills with his coffee. He didn’t dream, but when he woke up, groggy and sluggish, he could hear her. _I’ll see you soon. Don’t be afraid._ Clubs was next to him and when Droog finally broke, he put his hand on his shoulder and rode it out.

Back in the townhouse’s dingy office, Slick finished off a long string of chanting and slammed his fist into the center of the pentagram and yelled something in some language that sure as hell wasn’t anything Karkat had ever heard. There were purple flames covering the man's hands, running up his arms and licking off his shoulders like unholy wings, and the candles flared green all the way to the ceiling and scorched the plaster. Then Slick crumpled, shoulders heavy, that eye-burning purple fire playing along the lines of his body, muttering something too quietly to be heard over the . . .

The tearing of the fabric of reality? The screaming hinges of Death’s door? The ear-piercing shriek of a reaper cheated?

And then it was quiet and dark and Aradia was there, translucent and blue and floating and gorgeous, smiling down at Spades. He looked up, sweaty and shaking and pale. “You know what this is about?” She nodded, and Karkat wondered if she’d ever looked so happy alive.

She bent down and kissed Slick on the forehead. “Thank you, Mr. Slick. Daddy still needs me.”

“Yeah, he does,” Slick gasped. “Ready?”

“When you are.”

Slick sagged back onto his haunches and groaned something, _thielcuma_ , maybe, Karkat thought, and Aradia imploded in a burst of blue and gold – the reddish blue nimbus of her soul darting out of the pentagram, zapping through the candles and taking their fire with them, and circled the office before finally shooting into the box with an explosion of packing peanuts.

Slick collapsed then, a heap of bony limbs in the middle of the pentagram. Karkat ran over, waited for him to breathe, shook him, yelled, but got no response. His eyes stung with tears and he was just about to shake the man again when Slick took a big rattling breath and coughed, his entire body jerking with spasms. He went limp again but this time, Karkat was relieved to see, his chest was rising and falling.

“Is he alright?” The voice, right next to his ear, made Karkat jerk sideways with a shout. It wasn’t human or troll, more . . . digital . . .

Aradia’s shiny pearlescent robotic eyes were fixed on him, wide and concerned. “Holy fuck.”

“What did you think was going to happen, KK?”

“. . . I don’t know.” He lunged, wrapping his arms around her slick metal body, his face pressed into her shoulder. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, KK, honestly, of course it’s me.” She was smiling at him. “I just went away for a little while.”

“You were _dead_ ,” he whimpered between sobs. “We all thought you were dead. There – there was a funeral.”

“I was. It’s not so bad – he’s quite a nice person. We played Monopoly.”

Karkat leaned back, stymied. “. . . What?”

“You’ll find out eventually, I’m sure.” She turned to Slick, her arms hugged around Karkat, because he was threatening to collapse. “Is he alright?”

“I . . . think so. I’ve only seen him do . . . magic once before. It wears him out.”

“He never mentioned he was a wizard.”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it.” He hugged her again, tears still streaming down his face. “I can’t believe it.”

“KK.” She tipped his face up to hers, presumably looking him in the eye. “It’s me. I’m here again. For a while.” Gears whirred and her mouth twitched into a smile. “Now let’s get your dad onto the couch before he slips a disk and get out of here.”

“Where to?”

“I need to get to my dad before he loses his mind.”

-()-

Karkat let her drive. She knew how, after all. She told him as much. “Death sort of opens your mind up to knowing everything.”

“So are you . . . a ghost? In a robot?”

“In a manner of speaking. I am still dead, I guess.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter – it’s just technicalities.”

He giggled then, out of exhaustion, and terror, and the high you get when you come down off of grief and adrenaline. “Details.”

“Indeed.”

When they pushed the door open to the hideout, Karkat froze. He’d never wanted to hear Droog cry. And he couldn’t, really, but the quiet, stifled moans that were just audible were upsetting enough. He turned to Aradia, and his heart broke.

“I should have said something sooner,” she mused, the volume of her voice synth dropping, the beautiful work of art that was her face twisted and distressed. “Oh, Daddy.”

“How are you gonna get in there without freaking everyone the fuck out?”

“Like this.” She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the room, hands clasped behind her back. Karkat, hunkered down behind the doorframe, flinched. You could have recorded a pin drop with a tape deck, it was so quiet. “Hello, Daddy.”

The first sound was Clubs squeaking as – and Karkat had to lean around the door to see – he jumped over the back of the couch and hid. Droog was staring, pale, drawn, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, gaping. It was the worst Karkat had ever seen him look. “You’re dead,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes.” Aradia nodded. “But I’m here now, too. It’s okay. Mr. Slick brought me back.” She took a step toward him. “I wish he’d have hurried along with it – you look terrible.”

Droog scrambled backwards, halfway up the back of the couch. “You died. I was . . . I saw everything after . . . you were dead.”

She nodded again. “Yes, Daddy, I died. But it was okay – it’s okay now. I just had to wait for Mr. Slick to bring me back.”

“Slick did this?”

There was a clatter of ceramic as Hearts stepped out of the kitchen and dropped his mug. “Oh God he did it.” Droog spun, wide-eyed.

“You _knew_ about this?”

“I . . .” Hearts rushed over to Aradia and gently – carefully, as though he might break her – set his hands on his shoulders. “It worked?”

She beamed. “It did, Mr. Boxcars. Although I can’t say it was the mostly timely revival.” She looked stern, then. “I would have liked to be back sooner. My poor father –”

That was all she got out because, like he’d been electrocuted, Droog bolted off the couch, knocked Hearts aside, and scooped her up, hugging her like he never planned on letting go. And maybe he didn’t. Aradia just slung her arms around his neck and let her chin fall onto his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Why?” he asked, choked-up and half-laughing, one shaking hand running through her hair. “Why would you be sorry? Don’t be sorry.”

“I’m sorry to put you through that.” She snuggled closer as he dropped to his knees and sat back on his ankles, still holding her close. “I’m sorry to be away for so long.”

He took a breath, shaky and gasping, and kissed her cheek. “Hardly any time at all, dear.” He leaned back then, wiped his face with the back of a hand and used his thumb to rub an imaginary smudge from her cheek. “Slick, you magnificent bastard.”

“Come on, kid.” Hearts had got over to Karkat and lifted him up by the arm. “Your dad – where is he?” The look on his face said everything – Hearts knew the risks. The fallout.

“Sleeping,” Karkat said weakly. “At home. Sleeping.”

“You sure?”

“We checked before we left.”

He nodded. “Alright.” He motioned to Clubs – the short guy was peeking over the back of the couch, tears streaming down his face and over his big, stupid smile – and waited for him to hurry over, creeping around the duo kneeling in the middle of the room. “You stay here, alright? Make sure they’re fine. I gotta go check on the boss.”

The smile wavered. “He’s okay, right?”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh. Good.” He looked back to Aradia and Droog. “He did a good thing, huh?”

“Yeah, Clubs, he did.” He smiled, rows of needle-teeth peeking through his lips, and despite that Karkat didn’t find him scary at all in that moment. “He tried everything.” He nudged Karkat through the door. “Come on, let’s go make sure he’s alright, maybe bring him back here.”

“We should have a party!” Clubs whispered, conscious of the moment. “A homecoming . . . uh, lifecoming? Sollux is gonna be so excited; I have to tell him –”

Hearts laid a hand on Clubs’ head and cocked his head toward Droog and Aradia. “Maybe hold your horses on that, yeah? Let ‘em have some time.”

Clubs watched them for a minute, Droog just rocking her, Aradia perched in his lap, smiling faintly, and nodded. “Good idea.”

Karkat smiled to Aradia and then turned and left, walking along in front of Hearts as they climbed the stairs.

“I missed you, Daddy,” she whispered, after the door had closed and Clubs had meandered off to another room.

“I missed you too, sweetheart.”

“Daddy?”

“Hm?”

She pulled back, enough to look up at him. “It wasn’t that bad. You didn’t need to worry so much.” She smiled. “Did you know Death likes board games?”

He blinked. “What?”

“He’s really enthusiastic. We both knew I wouldn’t be staying, after all, so we had to find something to do in the meantime.” She straightened his tie with a disapproving little frown before looking back to him.

“What . . . did you play?”

She grinned then, happy, her porcelain teeth glinting. “Monopoly, and I used all the tricks you taught me. And guess what, Daddy?”

“What?”

“I beat him.”

He folded onto her and hugged her tight again, his eyes squeezed shut. “’Atta girl.”


End file.
